But I Date a Cheerleader
by AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: AU borrows heavily from 'But I'm a cheerleader' Dean's family holds an intervention for him, claim that he's gay and ship him off to 'True Directions' where he meets Castiel. Gabriel indulges in guerilla warfare and Sam doesn't know why he indulges him.
1. Chapter 1

_So...I started this months ago after watching the truly fantastic film 'But I'm a Cheerleader...' and I just found it on my computer, so here you go. At some point it will even get updated. BTW I am still writing the Devil wears prado, and it will be updated just as soon as I have an idea about what to write._

Dean 

Its official, Dean hates his family.

Surprising him with an intervention was bad enough, dragging him to a gay rehabilitation camp was pushing it,

But the thing that really makes the whole mess so absolutely, fucking beyond stupid?

He isn't even gay.

A couple of pictures on the walls of his bedroom (rock posters, not like, guys in tiny shorts or whatever – for Christ's sake) a sudden interest in going to the high school football games (because they were WINNING for once) and a lack of interest in getting into Lisa Braeden's pants (she just wasn't that good, alright, and it's not like she was lonely anyway), did not make him a homo-fucking-sexual.

It made him...well whatever, not gay anyhow.

Everyone had gone insane, and now he was stuck at 'True Directions', colour co-ordinated boot camp for your gay offspring.

Fucking awesome.

Castiel

Well, he likes blue. So that's nice.

Blue room, blue bedding, blue clothes, blue ceilings.

He likes blue. Good thing too.

Hey that rhymes.

Castiel was bored out of his mind, lying on his assigned bed and staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. Michael's last words rang in his ears.

_Get well Cas, or you can forget about college. _

_Lucifer sniffing derisively, Forget about coming _home_ too. _

He shuffles his legs in their pale blue scrubs. He tries not to think about anything, what do straight people think about? Men couldn't just walk around thinking about breasts and football the whole time...what should he be thinking about? What was safe?

The door opened and the other new arrivals, all three of them, came in. A scrawny guy with a mullet, a scruffy guy with a beard and small glasses, twitchy as a squirrel. Backing them up is a taller boy, almost done with puberty, broad and tanned with dark hair. They take in the room and Castiel himself.

"Hey" Mullet says, launching himself at the bed labelled 'Ash'. The other guy, apparently called Chuck, judging from his graceless sprawl over the appropriate bed, opens a case and pulls out a sheaf of inked papers.

The remaining boy stands still for a second, looking over the three of them, then huffs a laugh and goes to his bed on the other side of the room.

"I'm Castiel" Castiel says, sitting up.

"Chuck" says Chuck, marking off his papers and frowning.

"Ash" Ash makes a sign with his little finger and index finger extended, the rest of his hand a fist. Castiel has no idea what this means.

"Dean" The other boy does the same thing, nodding slightly at Ash. "So...all you guys are queer?"

There's a lengthy pause during which Chuck blinks owlishly at him, Castiel feels himself blush furiously, and Ash lets his mouth form a slow smile.

"Hells yeah" his eyes widen and he makes his hands into claws. "and we eat straight boys like you for breakfast." He cackles to himself and rolls over on his bed. "You idiots crack me up."

Dean smirks. "Funny dude, hysterical, really." He nods at Chuck, "What about you twitchy?"

"I'm...uh...I'm undecided." Chuck does indeed twitch slightly at the address and busies himself even more obviously with his writing. Dean raises an eyebrow and turns his eyes to Castiel.

"Casper?"

"Castiel." He keeps his voice low, he deals with bullies a lot of the time, low voices help. "and yes, I'm gay." He pauses, remembering what his counsellor told him about making people feel at ease. "Thank you for asking."

Dean laughs genuinely for the first time.

"Freak." But it's not unkind. "I'm not, just so you know."

"I'll try and contain myself." Ash calls from his side of the room. Chuck doesn't respond. Castiel stares fixedly at Dean.

"Dude, that's creeply."

"Sorry." Castiel keeps staring. Dean shrugs.

"Whatever, please yourself."

Castiel does.

Gabriel

Gabriel hunches behind the steering wheel of the van, looking out at the True Directions house.

Balthazar had changed the paint scheme.

Balthazar fucking would.

The plastic flowers in the garden were further proof that since Gabriel had left the staff the quality of the decor had definitely gone downhill.

The new recruits had already arrived and Gabriel picked up his phone to report back to base.

"The nest is occupied, should Archangel One initiate contact, over?"

A sigh crackles on the line.

"Gabe...we talked about this."

"You didn't say 'over' Sammy."

"Don't call me Sammy...over."

"Whatever." Gabriel stretches and reaches for his thermos. "How're things at home?"

"You've been gone twenty minutes."

"So what I hear is, you're missing me already." He pours himself a cup of hot chocolate, locates the siphon of cream and carefully swirls it on top, adding marshmallows, a chocolate spoon and gummy bears.

"Like a hole in the head." Sam mutters affectionately. "See you in while ok? I'll leave you some tuna casserole."

"Thanks" Gabriel brings his binoculars to his eyes. "Think tonight's too soon to invite them out?"

"Leave it a night or two." Sam advises "Turning in now...Archangel One. Over."

"You enabler you." Gabriel purrs. Sam rings off and Gabriel resumes his stakeout of the True Directions house, sipping his beverage and relishing the moustache it leaves behind (because moustaches are manly, everyone knows that.)

Dean

He isn't a homophobe, he honest to God isn't. But now he has to share a room, and a bathroom with three guys who he knows are gay. He can't not freak out about that. It's not like he's worried about them jumping him or anything (because frankly he could take them) but they'll be looking and it weird's him out.

The lights are out and they're lying underneath their identical blue comforters, a slight glow from the porch light preventing the room from being completely dark. Dean can hear the stiff sheets rustling dryly as each boy turns over, and their breathing is loud in the silence in between. He turns on his side and opens his eyes, looking over the flattened shape of Ash, already asleep, and across the room.

Castiel is looking straight back.

His eyes are wide open, his face a blur of pale skin and dark feathers of hair in his nest of blankets. He doesn't blink when Dean's eyes meet his, but his body moves, a stretch and relax, like he was waiting for Dean to acknowledge him, and now he can get down to the business of sleeping. His smudge of pale rose mouth smiles slightly, and Castiel turns over in a rush of crinkling blankets.

Dean lies on his back and tries to get to sleep.

Fucking weirdo.

Sam

"It's practically abuse, I mean its 2011, no one should be sending their kid to gay-boot-camp." Sam sips his beer and Bobby the bartended sympathises with a nod, he may run a gay bar but he's not what Sam would call 'connected to the scene'. Bobby sells beer, hangs tacky rainbow flags and then goes home to his wife Ellen, and sometimes, like this, Sam wonders what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone somewhat normal.

"Give 'em the old razzle dazzle..." Gabriel gulps the last of his daiquiri on stage (read – any kind of flat surface he can find after eight drinks, in this case a pool table.) "Razzle dazzle 'em." He sings with a slight slur.

"Get 'im off the table Sam." Bobby sighs.

"No power on this earth old man!" Gabriel shouts.

Sam watches with amused slightly troubled eyes. Gabriel is about the outset, campest man that Sam knows, or has ever met – embodying almost every gay cliché he can think of, in a five foot package of show tunes, bright pink alcohol and candy. Despite Sam's insistence that he is just a guy who happens to be gay, and that he in no way likes musicals, interior design or any of the other crap that people assume he must love like he loves...well Gabriel, and Gabriel naked in particular, he can't bring himself to tone the smaller man down.

They'd met the summer that 'True Directions' was established. Sam, Gabriel, Balthazar and Zachariah were the founding members, having been through a programme like it themselves. It had gone great, and Sam had really believed in what they were doing, until he realised he was spending a lot of time with his fellow counsellor, that he knew practically everything about the man, just as Gabriel knew him, and probably wouldn't be averse to making out at some point.

They'd abandoned 'True Directions' and now lived a few miles away in a rather festively decorated bungalow. Gabriel had seen fit to devote the majority of his time to sneaking leaflets for Bobby's bar to the inmates of the camp, smuggling them out in their minivan for responsibly chaperoned fun (chaperoned by Sam, while Gabriel usually got drunk and sang on the pool table – which wasn't that bad all things considered given the voice on him).

"Razzle dazzle them...and they'll never catch wise!" Gabriel winds it up, hops off the table, bows to the three people actually watching him, and trots over to nuzzle Sam and order another drink.

"I'm cutting you off." Bobby growls.

"Can I just have a little umbrella?"

Bobby hands over a tiny pink paper umbrella – sometimes Gabriel was too cute for even Bobby to glare at him.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean 

"Bah!"

Dean yanks the shower curtain back into place, shutting out the half asleep, but still suspiciously avid face of Casper, the world's quietest homo.

"Dude...privacy?"

"I didn't know you were in here." The other boy says calmly. "I only came in to brush my teeth."

Dean glares at the thin layer of plastic curtain between them, partly out of annoyance and partly to gauge its ability to hide his naked body. He can see only the faintest outline of the stranger in the bathroom, so presumably the guy can't see him.

Water runs somewhere to the left, things are picked up and set down, small wet scrubbing sounds support the notion that the guy is indeed just brushing his teeth. Dean taps his foot impatiently on the tile.

"I'd like to get out at some point, just so you know."

There's a small, perplexed silence.

"I'm not in the way, come out whenever you like."

Dean grits his teeth.

"I know you're not in the way." He tries again. "But you're still in here, with your...eyes."

There's a quiet huff of laughter.

"Dean, I'm not looking."

Dean frowns doubtfully.

"I'm really not." Castiel singsongs softly.

Dean peeks around the shower curtain, he can see Castiel's face, reflected in the mirror. His eyes are indeed shut. Quickly he darts out of the shower and claims his towel, wrapping it around his waist before throwing his robe on over the top.

"Can I look now?" Castiel asks politely.

"Yes." Dean snarks, a flush spreading over his face as he realises how ridiculous he's being. Castiel opens his eyes and goes back to scrubbing his molars. He withdraws the brush after a few seconds and glances back at Dean.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"If you ask me whether I'm cold, I'll beat you to death." Dean snaps by way of a 'Yes', Castiel ignores the mood beneath the words.

"What do you think about?" He asks instead.

Dean blinks.

"In the shower?"

Castiel cocks his head to one side.

"I suppose so, yes." He mutters. "But also...all the time, generally."

Dean frowns half disbelievingly.

"You don't believe in working up to the head scratchers at 7am, do you?" He sighs. "Why do you even want to know?"

"I'm supposed to be learning how my brain ought to work." Castiel recites, like he read it in a medical journal. "I need to think like a straight person, not just emulate them."

Dean feels a stab of pity for the poor guy, at least Dean doesn't believe this bullshit about rehabilitation, and he's already straight, so he doesn't have to engage with it. Castiel on the other hand seems to have hitched his wagon to the crazy parade.

"We think exactly the same Cas." He mutters, embarrassed by the guy's direct stare in the mirror and his own sadness for him.

"I highly doubt that." Castiel murmurs, looking down at his hand on the toothbrush, china white fingers light on the thin piece of plastic.

"Well...I think about..." Dean frowns, thinking about thinking is not easy. "You know, the things I'm looking at, what they remind me of, films I've seen, places I've visited, conversations I had." He shrugs. "That's how people think."

Castiel flushes delicately, like a painter's applied a tint to him.

"You don't think the same things as me...about what we see."

"That's because we're different people." Dean explains, as if imparting great wisdom. Castiel smiles a little, then bites his lip. His teeth are very white against the pink of it, freshly cleaned and porcelain fine, likely tasting of mint.

"You see...men...differently." Castiel says, in a hushed, hurried tone that implies that he really does not want to talk about it.

"That's because I'm not gay." Dean quirks his mouth slightly as he said it, self assurance in his smirk. Castiel frowns down at his hands again.

"That must be nice for you." He says quietly.

Dean kind of feels like an ass.

"There's nothing wrong with what you think." Dean covers, awkwardly. "This place...it's some retro, bible thumping torture pit for kids with old-fashioned parents." He bites the corner of his lip thoughtfully. "It's not going to be a big deal for the rest of your life."

"Dean." Castiel says his name like he's a separate species, not in a bad way, but as if a gulf separates them and Dean can have no understanding of the hidden ways of the cautious, Castiellus Nervousa. "If I don't fix myself...I'm not allowed home...I won't get to go to college."

Dean feels sad again, and it's not a great feeling to have at the asscrack of morning in a bathroom.

"What do you think about Cas?" he asks. The other boy frowns, in part at the twice used nickname but also at the question.

"When I look at men?" he clarifies.

Dean nods.

"I like them." Castiel says, bluntly, but with an edge of wistful desire that makes Dean feel slightly too warm under his towelling. "I think about how I'd like them to be, with me." The blush rages and he looks down, then up awkwardly, finding Dean's eyes. "Kind, and..." he gropes for the right word. "Rapt." He says eventually. "Focused on me." his tongue chases the slight salt sweat on his lip, diluted by steam from Dean's shower. "Naked, with me."

Dean realises he's stopped breathing.

He rectifies this abruptly, sucking in a lungful of air when his body really needs to expel some – causing an odd rushing in his ears like he's suffocating. His cock, resting in the damp hair of his groin, twitches just slightly, already stimulated by warm water and a soaping somewhat surplus to requirements, it grows a little saturated with blood, warm and plump and ignoring Dean's mental insistence that there are no women around – no one's said anything to do with women for at least twelve hours. There are clearly no breasts in the vicinity. His eyes find Castiel's lips again, damp with saliva and silk smooth under their slight chapping. His groin telegraphs the question as to whether those lips are not in fact better than any breasts (real or imagined or airbrushed) that Dean has seen for a good long while.

Dean's brain denies this.

His swelling cock calls him a liar. It demands recompense in the form of those lips, wrapped around the crown of his still plumping shaft, _right now_, sucking lightly and rubbing that covering of dry skin into his still wet, smooth flesh. His dick twitches expectantly.

Dean tells it to shut up, swallows, and tries to focus on Castiel, who is currently looking at the floor in embarrassment, his last words still hanging in the air.

"Cas." Dean says, coughing to get the croak out of his voice. "That's not...bad, that's normal for someone..."

"Someone like me." Castiel finishes, tiredly, an edge of anger creeping into his voice. "I can't afford to be 'like me' that's the problem."

And to that, Dean has no answer.

He does have his own problems to deal with after all, or at least – now he does.


	3. Chapter 3

Step 1. Admitting You're A Homosexual

Castiel

He watches closely as they go round the group. There are the four of them, the boys who he already knows, but there are also two girls from the other dorm. One by one they each have to stand up and state that they are homosexuals, because only then can they start treatment.

His hands are sweating. He wishes they weren't.

"Hi I'm Ruby." A blond girl stands up. "And...I'm a homosexual."

They clap, Ash looks bored, Dean, incredulous.

The other girl stands up.

"Hi, I'm Madison...and I like girls...a lot." She smiles, and sits back down with a raised eyebrow in the direction of Zachariah, who's running the session.

He notes something on his clipboard.

Castiel clenches his resolutely damp palms and waits for his turn to come around.

Dean

"Hello, I'm Castiel...and I'm a homosexual." Castiel says tonelessly, clearly as nervous as a bunny on the chopping block.

They clap robotically.

Now it's Ash's turn, then Chucks. Then his.

"I'm not gay." He says insistently, not bothering to stand but crossing his legs instead, ankle balanced lazily on his knee.

Zachariah perks up at the back – clearly he was waiting for dissent.

"If you don't admit you have a problem, you can't move on to step two." He warns, tapping his pen lightly on his clip board.

"Well, I'm not a homo, so I don't need step two now do I?" Dean points out.

Ash snickers to himself, Dean smirks.

"Dean." Zachariah puffs himself up and glares at him. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't have a problem – your family and friends have noticed these... irregularities in you. You're here to deal with that."

"I don't have irregularities." Dean says, feeling his good humour evaporate as he remembers that mornings encounter with Castiel. It was a blip, and more importantly, it was a private blip. No one knew about it. No one could prove anything.

"Oh no?" Zachariah said lightly. "Because in your file it says..." he flips to a new page of notes. "You have pictures of men in your room."

"Rock. Posters." Dean enunciates clearly.

"And you go to athletic events to watch your peers..." Zachariah continues unabated.

"Because I'm in high school! Everyone goes to games in high school." Dean says stubbornly.

"Do you ever look at men Dean?" Zach says with feigned concern.

"I don't walk around with my eyes closed, so yes." Dean practically growls. He's really starting to hate this guy, not to mention the fact that everyone is looking at him now.

"And what do you think when you do?"

He remembers Castiel that morning, the utter hopelessness on his face. He kind of blames Zachariah for that.

"The same things as everyone else." He bites out.

"How do you know?" Zach says triumphantly. "Maybe you just think that everyone thinks like you...when in fact you're different."

Wait...what just happened? Dean blinks and tries to follow that reasoning. But as much as he wants to deny it, he looked at Castiel. Not like he looks at Ash or Chuck or Jimmy Page...but as a collection, a collage of attributes that had resulted in...well, ten incredibly guilty minutes in the shower for one, but also a chink in his valuable armour of certainty.

Zachariah senses his victory like a shark smells blood in the water.

"Dean." He says coaxingly, "Is there something you want to say?"

"I..." Dean pauses, and in that pause come two simultaneous thoughts.

That he has to say this to get out of this place.

That it might possibly be true.

Thought number three is that Castiel is watching him, but that doesn't occur right on top of the others.

"I'm a homosexual." He says, the words feeling funny in his mouth, his eyes unable to leave the floor just in front of Zachariah's feet.

"Ok everyone, that's step one over – you should all feel proud of yourselves." Zach says in a perfunctory kind of way. Releasing them from the session.

Everyone gets up and leaves, but Dean can't really see the point in moving.

He's a fucking homo.

He can't...there is no way he can be...but, he is, or he is now because of Castiel...or he's always been but he didn't know.

How could he not have _known_? It's not like it's an allergy to shellfish – it should be pretty freaking obvious whether he likes girls or not.

But then, they've always kind of come to him...and he was lucky for that, because some of the guys he knows can't ever get dates...and everyone was always so sure he was such a _guy, _dating Lisa Braeden and liking his car, his football and his loud music.

He's just come to the revelation, somewhat forced, he'll admit – that it doesn't matter if he likes baseball, apple pie and Chevrolets... he can still be gay.

Which is information that would have been helpful at any point before now.

Castiel

Castiel sits on his blue bed, watching Chuck type and Ash read a copy of PC Gamer.

He's worrying about Dean – though outwardly he appears to be writing a letter home.

"So...mister 'keep your gay eyes off my hot self' is a raging queer." Ash flicks over a page. "Did not see that coming." There's no malice in his voice, just a kind of droll observing tone.

"He did seem..uh...conflicted." Chuck chips in, tapping at his typewriter.

"Do you remember what it was like?" Castiel says quietly, still looking at the blank paper in front of him. "When you first noticed what was happening to you?"

Ash frowns to himself.

"It sucked." Chuck says unnecessarily. "It really, really sucked."

"Seconded." Ash puts in. "That's why we're here though, right?"

Castiel nods.

He really hopes he's right.

Sam

There are occasions, brief, but frequent, when Sam wonders why he bothers.

Another year after all, is another chance for Zachariah and the other members of the True Directions staff to ruin the lives of another group of teens.

These little subterfuges, these games they play, are in the end only a minor nuisance to them. So many people support the True Directions cause, and people keep sending their kids there.

Still, as Gabriel works on new and inventive ways to get their messages across into the compound, Sam allows himself a moment of optimism. That maybe this time, they will reach them.

Maybe this time someone will choose their freedom over a lie.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thanks for pointing out that I'd written Sam, when I meant Adam- my brain was way away today._

Step.2 Discovering Your Root.

Dean

It's bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.

This is pretty much what get's Dean through that first night. He lies awake, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the snores and scuffling limbs of the other residents sleeping around him.

This whole place, from the plastic fucking flowers to the bright blue scrubs they have to wear the whole time – is a joke. It's like that saying, something he heard somewhere and can't remember when, that putting someone in a mental institution is the fastest way to make them crazy.

Well, sticking him in this therapy camp is the fastest way to make him question everything he thought he knew. Outside, he knew he was straight like he knew the colour of his eyes – and now in here he's getting confused and turned around like a rat in a maze. Everyone thinks he's gay – and the more he says he isn't, the more they say it's proof that he is. And when he gives in and agrees with them, they still think he's gay. There's no winning against it.

He's gay if he's not.

And he's gay if he is.

He can't make sense of it.

And then there's Castiel

Castiel, who he's starting to think, in his more paranoid moments, is a plant - some kind of roach motel for closeted gay teen boys like himself, designed to draw out even the slightest homoerotic tendencies and blow them out of proportion.

Dean is, in short, going crazy.

Which is not helped when said siren of unwanted erections and oddly piercing looks, speaks out of the dark,

"Dean? Can't you sleep?"

No he fucking can't, and the reason for that is lying not three feet away from him in matching blue pyjamas and peering over his blue sheets in a tangle of dark hair and blue fucking eyes.

Dean will be happy if he never has to see that colour again.

"No I can't." He growls ominously from under the arm he's slung over his face. "Shut up."

There's a long silence during which his own conscience yells at him to stop being such an asshole.

"Sorry Cas." He says grudgingly.

"It's ok."

The voice comes from the other side of him, only inches away. Dean looks up at the boy standing over him and yelps without dignity.

"Sorry." Castiel says quietly.

Dean struggles to sit up, rubbing his face to dispel the slight tiredness that has hung over him for the last few hours.

"What is it?" he asks.

Castiel shifts uncertainly from foot to foot, baggy pyjama bottoms making him look even slighter than he did usually.

"C'mon Cas, you're awake, you're feeling chatty...let's get this over with." He grumbles.

"I called home...no one would speak to me this early in the programme." Castiel mutters.

Dean feels like a dick.

He's kind of used to feeling like a dick, but not like this – like a giant evil troll stomping on peoples delicate little tired feelings.

What he actually says is, "Shit."

"Yes." Says Castiel, and then his shoulders jerk and his arms shift up to clasp around his chest, so he looks like a bird hunched in the rain, then he jerks again and Dean realises.

"Are you...crying?"

Castiel sniffs.

"Shit." Dean says again, only this time he yanks Castiel down by the wrist and sits him on the side of his bed. Castiel cries silently and violently, his shoulders heaving and his body bowing with the effort. Dean wraps an arm around him awkwardly, checking to make sure that Ash and Chuck are asleep. He wraps his other arm around Castiel, and somehow he ends up holding him against his chest, the top of Castiel's head in the hollow under his jaw.

Dean leans back against the headboard and touches his fingers awkwardly to the hair at the nape of Castiel's neck, shushing through his teeth like he did when Adam was a baby. And it would be like comforting Sam, if the sliver of Castiel's forehead against his skin didn't burn all the way down to the bone. After a while Castiel goes still, and Dean realises that he's stopped crying, and fallen asleep just like that.

But then, after thirty seconds, so does he.

Castiel

Castiel wakes up, and the room is still dark.

It's confusing, he's never likes waking up at night. But when he moves he can feel a heavy, human body behind and under him. He struggles upwards, because it's weird and unfamiliar, and the body jerks awake and holds his shoulders. Dean's voice comes out of the dark near his left ear, raspy with sleep.

"Cas, calm down."

Castiel goes limp, more from shock than anything else.

He glances to one side and sees his own bed, rumpled and unmade.

"Oh." He says, remembering. "Sorry."

Dean has a leg on either side of him, and Castiel can feel Dean's chest all the way up his back, the warm touch of it against the tops of his shoulders. He feels comparatively tiny, swaddled up in quilt and enclosed by Dean. The other boy moves a little releasing his shoulders and returning his arms to Castiel's lap.

"Go back to sleep." Dean grumbles, and Castiel feels a lightning quick flash of heat, just from that one string of sleep ruffled words. He relaxes and curls back into the warm space of Dean's body.

"We'll get in trouble." He says half-heartedly.

Dean makes a tired, irritated sound. "You shouldn't have gotten into bed with me then." He points out.

"You offered." Castiel says.

Dean's mouth appears next to his ear.

"I..." he begins, surely having decided to be argumentative a while longer, but then he stops, his body moving a fraction closer, sliding against Castiel's back in a way that makes him shiver. He hears Dean wet his lips, millimetres from the shell of his ear, Dean's hand flattens on Castiel's stomach, drawing its fingers across the cotton covered skin and making the other boy's insides twist and burn with it.

"I think you should go back to bed." Dean says tonelessly, and Castiel, at Dean's sudden distance, has no choice but to scramble out of the warm bed and pad back to his cold one. He lies awake even after Dean is ostensibly asleep, mind laden with guilt at his own lapse, the hot impression of Dean's hand and half-hard erection, burning a hole through his lower half like acid.

Dean

Dean wakes in the hope that everything that happened to him during in the night, was a nightmare. He could almost convince himself that it was, save for the fact that Castiel emerges from the bathroom just as he sits up in bed, and that the other boy looks both tired and guilty, unable to meet his eye.

Fuck.

Dean remembers the heavy sensation he'd encountered in the moment he'd realised just how Castiel's body felt against his own. The feeling had spread through him, almost a taste in his mouth – the taste of copper and thick pollen – sour sweet and cloying. He'd wanted, in that second of pure madness, to press his lips to the curve of Castiel's neck, to trail his tongue over the soft skin there, to raise his shirt and touch Castiel's stomach, fingers slipping lower on the trail of hair that, he imagines, would be down soft and dark...the awful suddenness of his own arousal, pressed in all its physicality to the body of a boy, was too dizzyingly sickening for his brain to not revolt at it. So he'd sent Castiel away, before he had the chance to act on the desire that heated his finger tips, and made him ache so deeply he had lain awake and miserably half-hard for hours.

He hates this place, he thinks to himself. But it's a weak revolt against the oppressive feeling of the place. It has him, and he knows it.

That day's session of therapy is part of stage two – identifying the route of your disorder. Once again they sit in a circle, and one by one they were invited to share their thoughts.

Ruby's mother had gotten married in pants.

Chuck had been really into Batman and Robin as a kid.

Ash had been brought up with eight sisters.

When it came to Castiel's turn the boy frowned down at the carpet and looked, as he had all morning, on the verge of tears.

"I don't know." He admitted, and once again Zachariah was quick to pounce on weakness.

"You must have some idea. Think hard Castiel." He said, feigning softness even as he made quick, spiteful notes on his clipboard.

Castiel glances quickly at Dean, who can't help glaring back.

_Don't you dare._

Castiel looks back at the ground.

"Come on Castiel." Zach wheedles, showing signs of impatience.

Castiel takes a small, shuddery breath.

"When I was seven, I was in the church choir and I used to change with the others." He says, voice as brittle and emotionless and rice paper.

It's a fucking lie, and only Dean seems to notice.

"Good." Says Zachariah "Now...Dean?"

He doesn't have a root, because he's not gay. Dean clings to this idea stubbornly. A few little awkward moments didn't tip the scale – the fact that he'd tried to comfort Castiel, and somehow the other boy had turned that around on him, did not make him gay.

"The same I guess...only at the pool." He offers.

If Castiel can lie, so can he – he can finish this programme and get the hell out before he's too far gone to know what's what anymore.

It seems to satisfy Zachariah at least.

Still, as the circle continues round, Dean finds himself thinking of a friend he'd had when he was six, he can't even remember the kids name, but they'd hung out one summer while Dean's family had lived in Illinois. He'd seen the kid naked, in one of those 'show me yours' games that were supposed to be so normal now, and natural for kids.

He has no idea why he's thinking about it now.

Madison is talking about her funny uncle when it comes to him.

Jimmy Novak.


	5. Chapter 5

_Well, a lot of people reviewed and seemed to think that Jimmy would be related to Cas in some way. So just to clear that up – jimmy is purely a boy that Dean used to know, who looks like Castiel – that's his entire purpose in the story, as a kind of plot point to show that while Dean has no 'root' (because as a cause of homosexuality that's a dumb idea) he does however have previous tendencies towards male intimacy – which is a fancy way of saying he's always been a little bit interested in boys his own age. _

_Hope that clears that up._

_FYI – I know dick about cars. Also – Dean is kind of a douche here, but then, he's confused and upset so lashing out is to be expected._

Step 3. Rediscovering Your Gender Identity. 

Castiel

Castiel knows nothing about cars. He also knows nothing about sports, in particular baseball and football. He has no idea how to make a camp fire or chop wood. He has no interest in hunting (which is cruel) and fishing (which is boring and cold) and kind of resents the idea that because of that he is seen as having a problem.

It's the first resentment he's felt towards something that isn't himself, and he finds it mildly worrying. Still, he fails to see why his idea of recreations – reading, listening to the radio, sketching minute details of random objects and sitting in trees watching people - are deemed 'inappropriate for his gender'.

Worse luck, he and Dean have been partnered up by their activity supervisor - a disinterested man named Balthazar who's Zachariah's second in command. They've mostly been left alone, but that doesn't change the fact that Dean is very interested in cars, sports and hitting things with sharp objects – so Castiel feels like he's letting the side down and making himself look bad.

For example, Dean is currently trying to teach him, on the provided junker, about the inner workings of an engine. A successful grasp of this, sporting rules and practices, as well as practical skill at camping, is required to pass stage three. And Castiel is struggling.

"So, again – this is the battery." Dean points into the grimy mass of metal parts and rubber hoses. "Carburettor, Cylinders, Pistons, Crankshaft, Connecting rod and Sump." Dean stops pointing and looks at him expectantly.

"Battery?" Castiel hazards a point at the box-like object.

"Yes...is that all you got from that?"

Castiel nods sadly.

"Five times we've gone over this." Dean points out, then sighs and grabs Castiel's hand, pushing it into the dark area under the bonnet and resting Castiel's fingers on the greasy surface of another metal shape.

"That's where you'd find a spark plug." Dean says, moving their joined hands to the next piece to be explained. "There are the valves." He guides Castiel's hand onwards. "That's the cylinder – pistons, piston rings..." Their fingers skim a tube of metal, "Connecting rod..." Dean's greasy thumb rubs along the back of Castiel's hand. "You getting it yet?"

Castiel realises he hasn't been paying attention to anything other than the feel of Dean's fingers.

He snatches his hand away.

Dean stares at him for a second before snorting and turning away to tidy tools rather roughly. If Castiel didn't know better, he'd say Dean looked offended.

"Right, because I can't be trusted near your precious self." Dean growls under his breath.

Castiel bristles at the unfairness of that.

"It's not like that." He murmurs, "I'd just prefer it if...if nothing happened that made this any more difficult for me."

"Might want to try...you know, not crawling into bed with me then." Dean spits angrily.

"I was..." Castiel breaks off and considers his words. "I was upset, and lonely - but you didn't have to let me in." He points out.

"It's your job to keep yourself on the straight side, not mine." Dean jibes him. "I'm fine, remember?"

Castiel glares at him with fury and growing frustration at his own weakness and sensitivity. He wants to hurt Dean so much right now, to harm him the way Dean's hurting him - tearing down his boundaries and making him want – want things he can't want – with seemingly no ill effects to Dean himself whatsoever.

So he says the one thing he knows will strike a blow.

"I remember you getting hard." He grates out, his voice coming rough and low from a place of extreme hatred.

Dean pales instantly, and savage joy goes through Castiel at the thought that he made that happen.

"Shut. Up." Dean says dangerously.

"Why?" Castiel almost smiles at the ludicrous nature of the situation. "Everyone here thinks you're gay Dean – they _know _it – and that's why they sent you here." He pauses. "That's why you can't even lie next to another boy, without getting hard." He practically spits.

Dean's face becomes stony and he grits his jaw in a way that should have provided warning enough, yet still Castiel is surprised when he's forced back against the car, the backs of his knees hitting the front bumper and Dean's fists gripping the front of his shirt.

Dean presses up against him and Castiel honestly doesn't know if he's trying to intimidate him or prove that he's not in the least bit aroused by him. Either way Castiel is only about an inch and a half from Dean's furious face, and the grip he has on his blue shirt is pulling it uncomfortably tight across his back. He tries to wriggle away, but Dean just shakes him a bit and pushed him back up against the car.

"I am not a..." Dean swallows and wets his lips. "just...I'm not, ok? So...shut up about it."

Castiel casts searching eyes over Dean's face, but this just seems to piss him off more. He hauls him away from the car and then pushes him back again.

"Say it." Dean glares down at him.

Castiel, his anger spent already, is cowed by the other boy's anger. "You're not gay."

Dean shakes him again.

Castiel repeats, louder.

"You're not gay." He flinches. "Let me go."

Dean does, backing away with a startled, slightly appalled look on his face. Castiel looks down at the clenched, wrinkled expanse of cloth over his stomach. He folds up his legs and sinks to the ground by the front of the car, back against it, eyes fixed on the ground.

"Look...uh..." Dean scuffs at the earth with his toes. "I'm sorry...I lost it for a sec." He looks at Castiel. "I wasn't..."

"You made yourself clear." Castiel manages to say, but it comes out in a funny little voice that isn't his.

He's never wanted his parents more than he does right now. Wanted someone other than his brothers to run to. The thought makes him both ashamed and sad.

"Cas..."

"That's not my name." Castiel looks up at Dean and feels something savage and protective surround his sadness like a lame junkyard dog. "Don't call me that. Don't talk to me at all...I clearly just offend you."

Dean looks at him for a second more, then backs away slowly, turns and walks away.

Castiel hears him begin to run as soon as he clears the tree line.

He remains by the car, smelling the oil and grease of it behind him.

No one comes looking for him.

He doesn't bother to go back to the dormitory until well after dinner, and the rise of darkness.

Dean

Dean shunts a small sapling out of his path with a flash of anger. Who the hell did Castiel think he was? Bringing...that...up? Throwing it in his face and making accusations at him just because he couldn't keep his hetero-choirboy act straight – literally.

A large dark insect of guilt buzzed at the back of his brain. He'd been an awful person to Castiel - an ogre in his sudden, violent actions.

But it was Castiel's fault.

Yes it was.

Yes it was. Yes it was. Yes it was.

So why couldn't he believe that?

Other than the fact it wasn't true.

Dean dropping to his ass at the foot of a tree Dean lets out a huff of exasperation and drums his foot on the dirt. He'd snapped at Cas and rough housed him because of what he'd said. What Castiel had said had been true – that's why it had pissed him off so much. But it hadn't really been necessary to say it. Castiel had only said what he did because Dean had struck the sore spot of Cas's weakness for normality.

Dean had only done that because Castiel pulled his hand away.

Because...what? Dean was a horrible person for touching him? That one little touch from his hand was going to knock Castiel back to step zero in a frenzy of unrequited (shut up it was) lust? No, of course not, and ok...so he could have just...kept pointing at the parts of the engine, but Castiel had been close to him for an hour...smelling like lemon and his hand was just sitting on the edge on the car.

Dean clenches his hand into a fist. Castiel's skin had been warm and soft, and he'd felt the pulse of his wrist with his thumb, right before the hand was snatched away.

Then he'd felt a dart of hurt, of humiliation, so quick and short that it had made him forget for a moment that Castiel had cried next to him the previous night. He'd forgotten that he didn't want to hurt him, because he'd already been stung.

Dean stews in his guilt for a good long while. It's worse than the way he used to push Adam around just because he was bigger and older. Worse than picking on kids at school or not really thinking much of Lisa, who he was supposed to at least like.

Castiel was more vulnerable than they were – mainly because he didn't seem in anyway used to people, and his family situation sucked worse than Dean's own.

And he'd shoved him, shaken him repeatedly and harangued him into following along with his own bullshit denial – because something was going on with him – he knew it. He'd known it for sure since he'd felt the desire to kiss the side of Castiel's throat as he'd rested on him. He knew, ok? Something was up.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

It gets dark around him. Very dark. And one by one the lights at the house start to turn off. He's missed dinner, but no one checks them into their beds at night at least, so he won't be reprimanded – he hopes.

By sheer unfortunate chance, Castiel and Dean arrive at the dorm at the same time, each hoping to have missed the other. They don't talk, though Dean feels a new flood of guilt at the sight of Castiel in the flesh.

They take turns changing into their sleepwear in the bathroom. Castiel brushes his teeth and gets into bed. He turns out his lamp.

They lie in silence listening to Chuck and Ash snore.

"I'm sorry, ok?" Dean says finally, his typical apology, one third apologetic, the rest, pure brazen impatience.

Castiel says nothing.

Dean sighs.

"Castiel...I'm sorry I pushed you, it was wrong...and I'm sorry I said what I did." He says.

There's a brief pause.

"I'm sorry for talking about your erection." Castiel says, and it's the weirdest apology Dean's ever gotten, but it's apt.

"Accepted." Dean allows. He still feels bad, and he gets the sense that Castiel is still mad at him. He attempts to resolve this subtly.

"Are you still mad at me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Castiel rolls onto his side, facing away from Dean.

"Because you hurt me."

Which makes Dean's heart shrink to the size of a bee sting, and hurt about a billion times more. He lies still for a moment, then slides out from under his sheets and crosses over to Castiel's bed, sitting down beside him.

"What..." Castiel moves, but Dean stops him with a hand on his shoulder. With his heart in his throat and his stomach wriggling with nerves and tension, his brain thundering 'you shouldn't do this' at him at one hundred times a minute, he gets onto the bed alongside Castiel. Lying against his back with maybe an inch between them.

He reaches over and places his hand against the spot where he'd held Castiel's shirt clenched in his fist before.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, Castiel." He says quietly.

Castiel stops being rigid next to him and turns to lay his own arm over Dean's.

"You can call me Cas again now." He says softly.


	6. Chapter 6

_Yay, updatyness. BTW you can now follow me on twitter...you know, if you want. I'm JollySnidge._

_And now onto the gay crisis...sorry that Dean is still a little bit of a douche._

Dean

Dean is going to have to have a talk with his dick. A serious one. It's unavoidable.

He imagines it'll start with him explaining the difference between fidgeting and active rubbing. Then he'll move on to the finer points of why Castiel does not constitute a viable sexual interest.

It will have to wait for another time though, as said protrusion doesn't seem inclined to listen right now.

It is however, very interested in the contents of Castiel's pyjama pants.

In all fairness, said contents does seem to be returning the sentiment.

Dean shuffles reluctantly towards wakefulness like an old man shuffling out to get the morning paper. He's warm, so very warm, and the bed is humid with the combined heat and night sweat of both himself and...he slits an eye open and can see the top of Castiel's head, which is resting against his own chest.

The room is still dark.

Night.

He closes his eye. His body is warm and heavy with sleep, Castiel having pressed himself into each and every available curve of it. Their legs are twined, one of Castiel's thin thighs pressing between his own, and Cas's hands rest on his hips. Dean's own arm is thrown over the other boy. He stirs in an attempt to get more comfortable, and the hard weight of his dick brushes the cotton covered mound of Castiel's own night-wood. A shudder goes up his spine, hot and oh so good.

Castiel nuzzles his chest with a low groan, sleepy and wistful. His breath sighing through Dean's cotton tee and burning his skin.

Oh fuck, it's too good.

Bad. Very Very Bad. His brain insists. But his traitorous lower body claims forgetfulness, it moves again (just to reassess the situation – it promises) and another glorious, gorgeous wave of sensation fills the lower half of him, snaking up his spine to light up his tired and not-entirely-oxygenated brain.

This time Castiel shivers, their cotton shrouded erections rub together a little at even the slightest motion. Dean bites his lip, Castiel's eyelids flutter and he moans.

Dean darts an eye to Chuck and Ash – both sound asleep.

"Cas?" he whispers, one hand coming up to ruffle through the dark hair under his chin.

Castiel buries his face in Dean's chest and stubbornly rolls his hips again, they both shudder minutely with pleasure.

Dean lets a choked, "G-od." His hand sliding from Castiel's hair down his chest and under the sheet, determined to separate them by force if necessary, even if his body is wrapped in Castiel's lax and yet unbreakable hold.

His hand touches something wet and Dean can't think over the spike of arousal that summons. Castiel makes a sound like 'Gnnuh...' and rubs restlessly forwards, trapping Dean's hand between their aching groins, rubbing the pre-come wetted cotton of his pyjama pants into Dean's palm.

Dean rubs his face into the soft whorl of hair at the top of Castiel's head, trembling fingers testing the thickness of Castiel's cock. The other boy whimpers and presses eagerly into the touch.

Dean's brain goes offline.

His hand tugs down the front of Castiel's cotton pants, scooting his own down as well and moving forwards to get that first touch of skin on skin.

It's hot and moist and alive with twitching muscles and aching, turgid veins. It feels so good he can't breathe right, can't do anything but press harder and rub inelegantly up and down, feeling Castiel's dick rub against his own in a damp, prickly rush of soft, soft skin and quick little licks of hot fluid. His moaned 'Oh God' is uttered gutturally into the top of Cas's head, and he can't stop, _he can't stop, _not right now. Not for anything.

"Uh...God..." and his hands snake up the back of Castiel's shirt, feeling the hot, smooth skin and the sharp points of his shoulder blades as Castiel's hips move sleepily with his own, his limp body leaning back into Dean's hands and a long, low moan escaping from his parted, flushed pink lips.

Dean takes in the sight of him, half lost in the shadow of the room, in snatches as the pressure builds in him, more intense than it has ever been; Castiel's soft pink mouth, the sweat on his upper lip, the chaotic shadow of his hair, the way his hips jerk into Dean's own, the unsteady sigh that chokes into a groan...

Dean winds up tight and unravels completely, loosing himself to the smooth slide of his hips, to the heat and the tangle of sweat damp sheets around him as he comes, comes so hard he can barely breathe, over the soft blade of Castiel's hip. His arms clench the other boy's body close, and Castiel gasps as he spills himself, hot and quick, over Dean's groin. His eyes flutter open and he sucks in a breath of shock, of confusion, that blurs into a moan as the last of his orgasm whites him out in bliss.

They lie, still and panting, until the air around them feels cool again, and the world opens up from its close, hot confines into a sensical place once more.

Castiel shakes and jerks back, shoving Dean away from him and scrambling inelegantly out of bed.

"Cas..." Dean is half up out of the tangled sheets when the bathroom door closes at Castiel's back. By the time Dean gets across the room and into the bathroom, quietly closing the door so as not to wake the others, Castiel is already in the furthest shower cubicle, the curtain drawn tightly closed.

"Cas...I'm sorry." Dean licks his lips, they taste like salt, and he can feel the dampness of his groin cooling in the frigid air. He's never been so ashamed. "Please talk to me."

"Go away." Castiel's voice is small and shaky.

"No, Cas..." Dean leans awkwardly on the wall beside the curtain, hearing Castiel draw back into a corner of the shower. "...I'm so sorry...I thought you wanted..." He clenches his jaw, "I didn't think."

"No, you didn't." Castiel says quietly. "And now it's over and..." makes a small, strangled sound of anguish, "It's done and that's it."

Dean realises, and feels about a thousand times worse.

"Shit, Cas I'm sorry..."

"Stop saying that." Castiel says viciously. "Stop...just...you don't take something like that from somebody and then apologise."

"If I'd have known..."

"What? If you'd known I was virgin you'd have _what?"_ Castiel says, half bitter half tearful. "Thought twice about fucking with me while I was asleep?" The profanity spilling from his lips cuts Dean like broken glass under his feet.

"I wish I hadn't done that." Dean murmurs, he really does, wishes that his brain and dick could be on line at the same freaking time for once – that he could work out what he wanted and not hurt Castiel in the process.

"Well, you did." Castiel spits. "You stole my first fucking time, and...stupid as this might be to you, I was kind of s_aving that_ _for somebody else_..." There's a sharp sound and Dean realises it was Cas hitting the tiles with his palm. "Someone who'd you know...care enough to want to kiss me first."

Dean slides down the wall and sits on the floor.

"I don't know how to make this better..." he whispers. "I don't even know why I did it."

"That's a real comfort." Castiel says, bitter anger having been spent, he sounds small and tired. "First you manhandle me until I tell you what you want to hear, then you're sorry...Now you get off on me and you're still sorry." Castiel scuffles. "It's two in the morning and I'm...covered in..." he makes a small disgusted sound. "and I'm so sick of your apologies." He stands up behind the curtain. "When I come out of here I want you in bed, in _your own _bed...and until we leave I don't want to hear from you again. Do you understand?"

"Cas, wait..."

"Do you?" Castiel demands.

Dean crumples. "Yes." He waits a second before going back into the main room, shucking off his damp pants and climbing into his own cold bed.

He hears Castiel emerge from the bathroom a while later.

He can't bring himself to turn over and look.

Sam

"You done?" he asks, amusedly, watching his boyfriend play with his typesets and markers.

"I think these kick last year's pamphlets asses." Gabriel says proudly. The leaflets are indeed spectacular, round and pink with radial lines and flowers designed to make them look like pink cocktail umbrella's. They're invitations to Bobby's in two nights time, and Sam's kind of looking forward to breaking the new intake out from under Zach and Balth's 'tender care'.

"They're going to love them." Sam says dryly. "unless, you know, they have eyes.

Gabriel looks mortally offended.

"Samuel, shut your mouth – these are art my friend , pure artistry." Gabriel cradles the pamphlets lovingly.

"They're tacky and gay and...oh, did I mention GAY." Sam chucks him under the chin and smears glitter glue up to his crooked nose. "Just like their dad."

"You know, I may need a girdle, because my sides just split." says Gabriel, dead pan.

"That's not the only reason."

Gabriel pours the bottle of pink glitter over Sam's head.

Sam glares at him fondly.

"You look like a big fairy." Gabriel says sweetly.

"I'm going to take all your teeth, you son of a..."

Gabriel is out of his seat and running before Sam can finish his threat.


	7. Chapter 7

Castiel 

Castiel barely sleeps for the rest of the night, and as such is the first to get up and go to breakfast.

Dressed in his clean blue scrubs he helps himself to oatmeal and apple juice, sitting at a blue plastic table on the blue side of the small dining hall. The girls arrive after him, sticking to their own area and leaving him in silence.

The one thought flying around his head is that, this morning should be something more than it is. His morning after should be better than sitting on a hard plastic seat, in a cafeteria that smells of cheap margarine and damp bread. He'd always thought, when he'd allowed himself to think about it, and that, rarely – that his first time would be something pleasurable and good, and that he'd wake up next to the person he'd been with, warm and knowing that what he'd done was right.

He was not naive enough to think that there would be only one person for him, and that he'd stay with the boy who took his virginity forever, but he had hoped to enjoy their company, to feel some affection and receive some in return.

He had never considered a first time with a woman – he could attempt appear straight, to be straight – but he had never considered giving that experience to someone he did not love.

And now Dean had taken it.

Castiel knew it wasn't his virginity, not really. Logically, as it was with women, the loss of that nebulous quality would come with penetration, wouldn't it?. But Castiel had his doubts now, Dean's were the first hands to touch him like that, he was the first to press their most intimate skin together.

What was he to Dean anyway? A willing participant in his struggle with his sexuality? Dean had proudly proclaimed on their first day that he was straight, clearly he'd had a change of heart on that score, and Castiel was empathetic enough to understand what that did to your mind – suddenly realising that you were not in 'Column A' and that for you there was another label entirely, and a whole other life.

But that didn't make it ok for Dean to use him as he had, even if, in that half asleep, desire stirred moment, Castiel had wanted nothing more than to feel Dean on top of him, _with _him, in all ways.

It did nothing to change the unfortunate facts,

That Dean was his first.

Only, Dean didn't want him.

And Castiel can't seem to stop wanting him.

Dean

Dean enters the food hall with Chuck and Ash, he freezes for second when he sees Castiel sitting alone on the other side of the room.

"Come on." Ash urges. "All the good stuff's congealing." He glances in the direction that Dean's looking. "Least Castiel saved us a seat."

"I'm not sitting with you guys today." Dean says, moving with Ash to the serving hatch. There's tough, cold bacon next to a trough of oatmeal and a basin of cooling, eye-like eggs.

His stomach contracts, and nervousness spikes into nausea.

"Why?" Ash is already gnawing on a strip of bacon as he choose the least undercooked of the eggs.

"He's...uh...not happy with me." Dean mutters, pouring himself some juice. He can stomach juice. Maybe.

"Because you're being a dick to him?"

Dean looks surprised.

"Yeah, I'd noticed. Cos you know, I have eyes." Ash nudges Chuck. "You think Dean's been being a dick to Castiel?"

Chuck twitches nervously.

"Uh...he's been a little...I mean, maybe you've been a bit..."

"Of a megadouche." Ash finishes. "Chuck's just too busy having a terror embolism to say it. Face it – you've got your briefs in a knot over which direction your peckers pointing and you're taking it out on him." He slaps Dean on the hand with his bacon greased palm. "He's a sweet guy, he doesn't deserve your shit."

"I'm not planning on attacking him anymore." Dean mutters. "And...it wasn't...I'm sorry, ok?"

"Good." Ash grins. "Look, I'm just here because my parents sent me, as soon as I get out of here? It's going to be like I never went to 're-hab', but Castiel has his own problems, and I'm sure as hell not going to make them any worse for him. We should get along, after all, we're kind of in the same boat right now." He takes his food and starts to walk towards Castiel's table. "Make it up to him – set it straight."

Chuck follows Ash sketchily, carrying a huge mug of coffee and a bagel.

Dean kind of wishes he'd just done what Ash seems to think he did last night, namely, insult Castiel or physically bullied him. The reality is far worse. How can you make something like this right? He wonders. Hurting someone with what is meant to be an action of pleasure.

He drinks his juice at a table outside, and so it is only he who experience a mild extra terrestrial encounter.

Ten flying saucers ripple over the wall of the tiny patio on a warm breeze, spinning and swaying lazily as they swoop down to him.

Dean thinks he might need some more sleep.

Then one of the invaders strikes him in the forehead. It's a paper circle, and it crumples a little as he swipes it down. It's pink, glittery, and marked with radial lines and small flowers. Fucked if he knows what it's supposed to be.

On the reverse, in Disney-Mexican font is the message –

Gay's of tomorrow, jailbreak tonight, midnight. Dress to impress for a night at Bobby's phantasmagorically festive homocentric establishment. Trust us – we're the ex-ex-gay's of today (and yesteryear).

Dean kind of wishes it had been aliens.

Aliens would have just probed him, this is making his brain and eyes hurt.

He shows it to Ash later when they're all in the bedroom, Castiel stubbornly ignoring him, lying limply on his side and facing away from where Chuck, Ash and Dean are sitting on Ash's bed.

"What if it's a trap?" Chuck asks hesitantly.

"It's a pretty weird one." Ash points out, fingering the paper. "And a little...well, super-fantastically-gay, to be either Zach or Balthazar."

"Point." Dean says, distractedly looking over at Castiel. He's avoided Dean all day and Dean really can't take it anymore."So...are we going to go?"

"I'm in, hot bikers and the promise of beer." Ash smirks. "If it's a trap I'll go for it every time."

"Chuck?" Dean asks.

"I shouldn't." Chuck bites his lip. "What if we get caught?"

"What are they going to do? Kick us out of the place we hate?" Dean raises an eyebrow.

Ash glances over at the other bed.

"Castiel? Are you coming with."

"This is a foolish idea and you will all suffer its consequences." Castiel's hard voice intones.

"Give me a minute." Dean mutters to the other two boys.

"You sure?" Ash asks speculatively.

"No. That's why I want you to leave." Dean feels jittery. "Relax, I'm not going to bully him."

Ash and Chuck leave the room, softly closing the door behind them. The movement of their departure is enough to make Castiel tense on his bed.

"Cas...I'm..."

"Apologise to me, and I will smother you in your sleep." Castiel spits, still not looking at him. "You ruined...everything."

"I don't know how to fix it." Dean pleads.

"There isn't a way. It's all too..." Castiel rolls over, whip fast, to face him. "It's too hard, to pretend to be normal, to be fixed, now that you've done, what you did." He says, his face twisted up with anger and regret. "You have no idea how hard. Now that I know..." he struggles for words, "What it _feels _like, God!" He sits up. "Fuck, this is my life, Dean, this was my future – now I can't go home, I can't go to college – if my brothers find out..."

"They won't" Dean exclaims, panicked. "Cas...I'm not going to tell anyone – I'd never do that to you."

"Good to know you have limits." Castiel's mouth is a hard line.

"I was half asleep, and I just felt...and you wanted me, you didn't pull away..."

Anger erupts across Castiel's face.

"That's low." He grits out.

"It's true." Dean is shaken, both by Castiel's anger and his own confused emotions, but he stands his ground.

"If it was up to anything but biology...and friction – I would _never _choose someone as..." Castiel searches for his words like a wounded man groping for a blade. "Damaged, repressed and unstable – as you...you...utter..." he fails and is left speechless and aghast with anger and shame. "I would never have chosen you."

Dean is shocked at how much that hurts.

Castiel

Castiel watches pain span Dean's features and pauses to snatch air into his lungs, his body humming with pain and fury. How dare he, how could he use that against him? His own desire, his inhibitions lowered by semi-consciousness and his sexuality, so long repressed, boiling to the surface so suddenly.

"I chose you." Dean growls, jaw set as if to keep the words in.

Castiel freezes.

"You think...being sent to this place, that was what was gonna make me gay?" Dean is tight with anger and his voice is tinged with a plea for understanding. "Clearly I was... I've always been this way. But it's not true what they said about me, any of it. And it has nothing to do with what I feel about you." His hands curl to fists. "Cas...it's you. Ok? Not Ash, not Chuck, You. Since I got here, I haven't stopped wanting you, and I want..." He swallows. "I want to get to know you, I want you to not be pissed at me...and more than anything, right now I wish you'd stop looking at me like I ruined your life – because I can't take that."

Castiel shakes his head mutely. This cannot be happening, he cannot...Dean can't be seriously saying that Castiel means anything to him, can't be laying a claim to him. Because that would me...cosmically unfair.

At the shake of his head, Dean looks intensely wounded.

"Ok...great. I'm an ass." Dean looks down at the ground. "I'm sorry...ok...I won't." He sighs. "I won't try and talk to you again." He turns to leave the room. "But...whether you want it or not – this is my apology." Dean looks at him from the doorway. "I'm sorry Cas."

Castiel sits on his bed long after Dean has departed. Looking towards the closed door and wondering why Dean has been placed in his path. An immovable object that he cannot seem to avoid.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam

"Will you calm down...stop jiggling the seat." Sam glares at Gabriel from the driver's seat of the minivan.

"I'm too excited." Gabriel hisses.

"Are you sure it's not the..." Sam counts the paper tubes in the ashtray. "Eighteen, pixie sticks you've eaten since we left the house?"

"Eighteen?" Gabriel twitches, "Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Awesome!" Gabriel yells, causing Sam's ears to ring. "I brought like, twenty with me." He looks around the front of the car. "Search the cockpit, we've got men down in here!"

"No. You're not getting me like that again." Sam gripes, looking out of the windshield and still seeing no sign of the True Directions kids. Maybe Zach and Balthazar had cracked down on escapees after last time, maybe the kids were actually in the programme for the long haul. Or hell, maybe Gabriel's approach to paper craft had terrified the bejeezus out of everybody.

"Getting you like what?" Gabriel mutters through a mouthful of freshly recovered sugar.

"Oh Sam, please help me find the pixie stick I 'accidently' dropped, it might be you know, in my lap." Sam glares at him. "It's a stupid trick."

"It's how we met." Gabriel bats his eyelashes.

Sam raises an eyebrow. "I felt you up, that doesn't mean I believed you for a second."

"You mean our entire love is founded on a lie?" Gabriel turns on the puppy eyes.

"Whereas if I'd fallen for your little ruse to get me to stick my hand on your crotch..."

"It would have been founded on mutual enjoyment." Gabriel smirks.

"You're incorrigible." Sam sighs.

"You love it." Gabriel leers.

Just then Sam spots four figures making their way through the back gate of the house. They approach the car and he can see that they're all boys, a skinny guy with a mullet, a scruffier boy with square glasses and a jockish dude are at the front, with a skinny pale boy in a blue shirt behind them.

Sam rolls down the window.

"Hey guys."

"You're not going to kill us and harvest our organs are you?" Mullet asks.

"That's not plan A" Sam says, raising his eyebrows.

"Not, plan A is white slavery." Gabriel leans past him to smirk.

"Told you." Mullet nudges the squirrely, scruffy guy and hauls open the side of the minivan, leaping in and making himself comfortable. "Oh hey, a pixie stick." He rips off the top and downs the tube of sugar before Gabriel can squeak in protest.

Once all the boys are in the back of the minivan, Sam does the introductions, steering them out onto the road to Bobby's.

"Well, I'm Sam, this is Gabriel, and we used to work at True Directions."

"What happened there?" Jock-guy quips, "You guys get caught making inappropriate use of arts and crafts time?"

"This is Dean." Mullet interrupts Sam's reply. "He wasn't gay before he got here...now he's being kind of a dick about it."

"I never would have figured that out." Gabriel drawls.

"Hey!" Dean snaps.

"Oh Hey yourself closet-case." Gabriel mutters.

"You had to eat all the sugar." Sam hisses. "You know it makes you moody."

"I am not moody!" Gabriel snaps, offended.

"Well this is fun." Mullet says loudly.

Everyone shuts up.

"So anyway." Mullet continues. "I'm Ash, that's still Dean, this is Chuck and the guy trying to pretend he isn't here is Castiel."

"Angel in the front seat and the back." Gabriel snorts. "We're covered then."

"Why's he pretending he's not here?" Sam asks.

"We...uh..." Ash glances at Chuck. "I think the term is press ganged?"

Chuck nods.

"They press ganged me." Castiel says stonily. "Which I will tell Zachariah when we get caught."

"Which you won't." Sam promises.

"Don't get mad at us. Dean carried you." Ash points out.

Dean looks embarrassed. Castiel glares at him.

"I have no upper body strength." Chuck says defensively.

"You have no lower body strength." Ash chuckles.

"So." Gabriel asks over the continued bickering. "How long have the angel and the dick back there been screwing?"

The question is met with silence.

"Douche." Dean mutters.

"Mess with the bull." Gabriel shrugs. "But you are getting a little action aren't you? UST you could bottle and sell to Greys Anatomy."

"I beg you, stop reading fanfiction." Sam sighs.

"No. It's like a window into the soul of the internet." Gabriel pronounces. "Besides, it gives me ideas."

"I reiterate..." Sam mutters, "Stop reading..."

"Spoilsport." Gabriel pouts.

"What kind of psychos are we riding with?" Dean mutters to Ash.

"You're sleeping with Castiel?" Ash hisses.

"Are we still on that?"

Ash punches him on the arm.

"Ow. Dick, what was that for?"

"For making his situation ten times worse. Jesus, if anyone was still more obviously carrying around their V card..." He nudges Castiel, "no offence dude."

"I'm pretending not to be here." Castiel intones.

"Yeah, stop doing that." Dean advises, "I apologised, we're taking you out to have some fun. Just go with it."

Castiel glares at him.

"That's your advice? The last time you 'went with it' you took my virginity while I was sleeping."

Gabriel leans over and whispers in Sam's ear.

"What kind of freaks are we riding with?"

"We're here!" Sam exclaims, feeling more relief than he probably should after a twenty minute drive.

"Thank fuck." Ash flings open the door. "All ashore that's going ashore." The exit the van. "All who think Dean should have to wait outside for his crimes while we all have a good time?"

"Hey!" Dean sputters.

"Aye" Ash says.

"Uh...Aye?" Chuck adds.

"Yes." Castiel mutters.

"Aye!" Gabriel shouts.

"Gabe?" Sam nudges him.

"Sorry, I got caught up in all the democracy." He smiles up at Sam. "Buy me a daiquiri?"

Sam sighs and steers his boyfriend towards the bar. Gabriel starts to hum 'Wasted Away Again in Margaritaville."

This is going to be a long night.

Castiel

The bar is noisy and decorated with rainbow flags. Sam is nice enough to buy him a bottle of coke and asks him about his plans for college. Ash and Chuck dance on the almost empty dance floor, Chuck's face buried nervously against Ash's throat.

"They're kind of an odd couple." Sam says.

"I didn't know there were a couple at all." Castiel mutters.

"Well, from the sounds of things you had your own stuff going on." Sam answers neutrally. "Are you...with Dean?" Castiel looks panicked. "I'm not hitting on you...because I'm old and I have a boyfriend who's literally eat my bone marrow if I cheated...I'm just curious...because you seem kind of closed off about it."

"We ...had a...something happened." Castiel says, looking at the sweating bottle in his hands. "And he said he chose me, that he wanted me. But..." He frowns. "If I don't get fixed? I don't...I can't go home, my brothers won't let me. Then I can't afford college and my life is ruined...just because he said he chose me."

"He doesn't seem like a liar." Sam murmurs.

"He doesn't seem to know what he wants, half the time." Castiel grips the bottle tightly.

"Then I suppose it's down to you." Sam sits up straight when he hears Gabriel's singing voice burst out of the crowd. "Sometimes you don't have to be fearless, you don't have to not worry that it won't work. You just have to be sure, about what you want."

Castiel doesn't look convinced.

"Gabe was sure." Sam smiles slightly. "And, very insistent. I kept changing my mind, trying to work things out...turned out that he was right."

"But I'm not sure. And neither is Dean."

"He's still standing out there. I checked." Sam says pointedly. "Does that seem 'not sure' to you.

Dean

Dean stands outside in the alley, wondering why he hasn't just walked back to the home. The answer he would give if anyone was around to ask, would be that he has no idea how to get back there. The truth is, he's waiting on Castiel, waiting to make sure he's ok, to sneak him back into True Directions without detection.

Not that anyone seems to value that tonight.

Dean's cold and tired and so not having fun. Which he knows he kind of deserves, still it would be nice if someone, anyone, recognised that he was doing the right thing.

Anyone at all.

Even Chuck.

Still, when Castiel opens the side door and comes out with a bottle of soda for him, Dean's kind of glad the universe didn't take him at his word and send him Chuck.

"Thanks." Dean says, taking the bottle and sitting down on an old air-conditioning unit.

"No problem." Castiel sits down next to him, and Dean allows himself to hope, just a little.

"You're forgiven." Castiel says quietly.

"Why?" Dean has to ask.

"It's the Christian thing to do." Castiel says stiffly.

"Bullshit."

Castiel sighs.

"Because...you were right. I enjoyed it. I wanted..." Castiel wets his lips. "I would have pushed them away, if it was Chuck or Ash...I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone to them to cry over my family...or let them into my bed...I chose you." Castiel looks fixedly at the ground.

"So...what does this mean?" Dean asks.

"That I'm screwed." Castiel sighs. "That I won't be 'cured' and, I'm either going to have to lie until I finish college or..."

Dean touches the side of his face. Castiel stops talking. When Dean kisses him, he doesn't push him away.

"What was that for?" he asks quietly.

"I want to do this right." Dean shifts so that he can hold Castiel's shivering form closer to his own body. "I want to kiss you first and then...then we do it right." He hugs him tightly. "Even if it means waiting for you to finish college."

"You'd do that?" Castiel looks astounded. "Dean, until about a week ago, you had no idea you were gay..."

"I'm dumb. I was in denial." Dean frowns. "I didn't know I liked guys, so sue me – but I know I like you, more than like." He kisses him again.

Gabriel

Having been wrestled from the pool table and deprived of his solo for the evening, Gabriel stands with Sam and watches the two teens making out passionately in the alley.

"Every year." Gabriel says exasperatedly. "What is it about that place that gets people so riled up?"

"I think it's the water." Sam frowns. "Makes them all crazy." He looks down at his boyfriend. "Maybe Balthazar drugs them?"

"Balthazar fucking would." Gabriel says, shaking his head.

Dean and Castiel continue, oblivious.


	9. Chapter 9

_Some may remember the fic I posted a while ago now, 'Me and Mine' the story of a priest falling for a seventeen year old parishioner and the struggle the two had to go through to finally be together. Well, the original was a little over 50,000 words long, rough, scattered with typos, pacing issues and an awful lot of bad writing._

_No longer mired in its humble fan fiction beginnings, the initial tale has grown to a fair bit over 100,000 words, has been proofread, re-written and added to, until only around 40% of the original is left. It is now, if I do say so myself, a finer, more polished work, with original characters, setting and a far more balanced plot._

_Plans are to make the eBook available for a tiny price, under a pound, if that, and the money will go towards funding my Masters in Creative Writing - hopefully enabling me to become a better writer and to produce more fiction._

_More details will be posted in around a week when the book goes live, however, here is a taste of the start of chapter one - part of the second to last draft which I'm currently doing final checks on._

_You can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter for more updates on the novel._

Dean

Dean is happy.

It's such an odd, startling sensation that it brings him up short on the drive home. The vehicle rattles and bumps along the road and the inside is dark, Castiel is wedged against his side, warm and limp with exhaustion. He 'mmmm's' softly when Dean nuzzles the top of his head, Cas's long pale fingers reaching for his own and his body presses further against Dean's own.

Ash makes a choking sound.

Dean glares at him. "Shut up."

"You guys are just too cute for words." Ash snickers. Chuck elbows him in the side and Ash wriggles his fingers into Chuck's waist, sending the squirrely guy squirming and crumpling with laughter.

"You're all too cute, cut it out." Gabriel raises his eyebrows and glances at them over his shoulder.

Sam chuckles to himself.

"If you'd let me have that last daiquiri I'd find them less irritating." The smaller man complains.

"If I'd let you drink that I'd have had to carry you to the car and you'd be getting all...handsy right now."

There's a short silence.

"Stop that." Sam mutters.

"Make me." Gabriel whispers.

"Please stop." Dean grouses.

Castiel smiles against Dean's chest.

Castiel

He knows it can't last, that he's going to get out of the darkened minivan and go back into the True Directions house. He's going to continue his 'treatment' and then go to college and then...three years from now, he and Dean can be together.

He's taking the long view, admittedly but, there is hope where there wasn't any before.

When the van stops and they all climb out, bidding their goodbye's to Gabriel and Sam, Castiel holds Dean's hand as they creep back to their room. Inside, Chuck and Ash change and get into bed, lying on their sides and whispering across the gap. Dean and Castiel go into the bathroom to change into their pyjamas, kissing and touching lightly as they do so. Castiel remembers the fierce, bight urgency of his desire when Dean had had his hands on him, now it's softer, warm rather than blazing, and he feels reassured by their control.

They get into bed and Dean lies on his side, looking at him through the dark.

"I love you Cas."

Castiel's chest fills with warmth.

"I love you too."

He is not naive enough to believe it will be easy, yet he thinks that perhaps, with Dean, he can have the best of both worlds; receive an education as promised by his brothers, and then be true to himself.

He finds himself cautiously optimistic.

Still, he is not prepared for the vicious fireworks that greet them when they wake the next morning.

Zachariah sweeps open the curtains and dazzles them with searing sunlight. Dean groans and rolls onto his front, burying his face into the pillow. Castiel sits up, as do Ash and Chuck.

"Dean." Castiel hisses, throwing a pillow at him when Dean still doesn't move.

Dean sits up and glares at him. "What?"

Zachariah coughs for attention, holding up a book of matches from Bobby's bar.

Castiel is the only one to notice Chuck look guilty – clearly they belonged to the aspiring writer.

"Who brought these here?" Zachariah asks coldly.

They all remain silent.

"Who, left this house...went, I can only presume, with those two deviants who have been 'casing' the house in that ridiculous van...and visited that loathsome bar?"

Castiel feels fear and guilt merge in his stomach.

"If the guilty party doesn't own up...I will be forced to call your families...and I might even be forced to expel all of you, from the programme."

Dean looks quickly at Castiel, who can see the calculation on Dean's face.

He won't survive a visit from his brothers – not when they would think the worst of him at the slightest provocation.

"I did it." Dean says. "I went with Sam and Gabriel to the bar...the others didn't want to go."

Zachariah puffs up like an irritable pigeon in the rain.

"Pack your things Mr Winchester...I'm calling your parents."

Zachariah storms out without another word.

"Dean..." Castiel turns to him and can't for the life of him find the words to thank him enough.

Ash claps Dean on the back. "Sorry man."

Chuck bites his lip. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to..."

"It's alright." Dean starts gathering his stuff together, shoving it into his bag. "My parents might be assholes for putting me in here, but they'll be alright after a while." He finishes the task and sits down on the bed, Castiel sits beside him and takes his hand, leaning their heads together.

"Write to me, ok?" Dean mutters.

Castiel strokes the back of Dean's hand. "Of course I will."

Zachariah returns and Castiel reluctantly moves away from Dean.

"Your parents have specified that you be released into your own care." Zachariah says without looking at Dean.

Castiel feels the other boy freeze at his side.

"I can't go home?" he asks.

"They would not welcome you back." The older man says simply. "Nevertheless, you cannot stay here. I'd like you off of our property within the next five minutes."

Dean's still in his pyjamas.

He was asleep mere minutes ago and now he's leaving, unable to go home.

Castiel sees the despair in him, and, once Zachariah has gone to organise the opening of the front gates, he turns to Dean.

"Go to Sam and Gabriel's – you can get the address from Bobby."

Dean looks so relieved to have a destination in mind that Castiel can't help but squeeze him in a fierce hug.

"It'll be ok." He promises.

Dean hugs him back, and Castiel knows that Dean can't see any kind of hope for the future right now. In truth, neither can he.

Ash and Chuck go through their stuff and present Dean with fifteen dollars in crumpled bills. Chuck loans him his umbrella, as the sky outside has turned a little cloudy since they woke up. Ash and Dean exchange emails.

Castiel kisses Dean before he goes.

And then Dean is gone.

Sam

Sam gets off the phone with Bobby just as the promised runaway arrives at his door, the black umbrella over his head running wet and the teen underneath spotted with wet and looking as bedraggled as the stray cats Gabriel took in by the sack load.

"Hey." Sam says, and Dean looks at him sheepishly.

"So...I got kicked out." He starts.

"Come on in." Sam opens the (rainbow coloured – damn his boyfriend) door wider and allows Dean inside. He leads the teen into the living room, where rainbow needlepoint pillows and soft-core black and white photographs jostle for space with about ten cats, all with a different colour collar, and all cozying in on Sam's personal space.

"You have a lot of cats." Dean notes, nudging a tabby to one side and sitting down when Sam gestures that he should.

"Gabriel has a lot of cats. I, have allergies." Sam pops his second Claritin of the day and shrugs. "You learn to live with it."

Dean nods sleepily, he's had a long walk after all.

"He's making dinner right now, so...you're welcome to some, unless you want to get some sleep?"

Dean blinks at him.

"You're staying by the way." Sam tells him. "We can't let you just roam around with nowhere to go." He looks at Dean apologetically. "And, it is our fault that you got kicked out of the programme."

"Actually, it's Chuck's fault." Dean mutters. "But, I'm not holding grudges."

Gabriel comes in from the kitchen, hands swaddled in novelty mitts, one a dolphin, the other a chilli pepper.

"Oh, hey there lippy." The short man directs his attention to Sam. "Do we have any more anchovies?"

"You're making lasagne." Sam reminds him.

"Oh..." Gabriel glances back at the kitchen. "Do we have any take out menus?"

"Welcome to the mad house." Sam sighs, levering himself to his feet and going to deal with whatever catastrophe is brewing in the kitchen.

He glances back in time to see Dean pet the black cat that slinks into his lap, gazing fixedly at the wall as he rubs his fingers over the purring animal.

Sam sighs to himself as he opens the kitchen door, thinking that he'd never seen someone look so alone.


	10. Chapter 10

_My novel, 'Me and Mine' is now available for kindle, computer and app on the Amazon kindle store. Link in my profile. As always I'm grateful for the interest, and to everyone who's bought a copy._

_You can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter for more updates_

Dean

Dean wakes up with a tabby on his chest, a black cat by his face and a ginger moggy with only one ear stretched over his feet like a baggy sweater.

"Morning." Sam says, his large forehead coming into view over Dean as he opens his eyes and squints tiredly upwards. "Tea?"

A mug (a rainbow striped cat with 'to my purrrfect girlfriend' painted underneath) clunks down on the side table.

"Breakfast's in five minutes – I'm making waffles." Sam tells him, and disappears.

Somewhere Dean can hear a faint recording of Lady Gaga, with someone singing Liza over the top.

He can smell vanilla batter browning, warmed syrup and...oh bacon – glorious, salty and crackling away in a strangers kitchen.

It's some bizarre mixture, heaven and hell.

He has a pillow clenched under one arm, soft cotton warm against his bare chest. He's never missed anyone as much as he misses Castiel right now. He's never missed the familiar sounds of home as much either – his Dad swearing as he burns toast, Adam singing in the shower and his Mom setting the table.

Another life and he might have woken in his own bed, Castiel at his side instead of three cats and a pillow.

He gets out of bed, slides on a shirt over his boxers, disregarding the purple silk robe on the back of the door as a joke.

In the kitchen Sam is dealing out waffles and strips of bacon like a card shark, pouring amber syrup like a bartender.

"Did you sleep ok?" Sam asks. Dean chooses to ignore the enormous man in a plaid apron with the antlers printed on his chef's hat – choosing instead to focus on Gabriel, who's sitting at the table in a cloud of pale yellow chiffon. Black silk pyjama's underneath.

"Yeah –fine." Dean says, sitting down. "Thanks for the room."

"No problem." Gabriel smiles as he douses his plate in syrup. "But, now you have to tell us what you've got planned."

"I don't know." Dean looks down at his plate. "I guess...try to get a job, get a room somewhere."

"No..." Gabriel rolls his eyes, exasperated. "The plan – the big romantic...thing...that you're going to do to save your oddly silent lady love from the clasps of the anti-faggotry league."

Sam chokes on his coffee.

"Seriously?" Dean glares at the taller man.

"He's got a point – and he will keep on at you until you do something." Sam sighs. "You can't just leave Castiel to the tender mercies of Zach and Balthazar."

"I know, but what can I do?" Dean asks, back stiffening. "I'm got no home, no money – Cas wants to go to college, and to do that he has to play straight for a while."

"Yeah, because that'll work." Gabriel mutters. "You've been away for him for what? Eleven hours and you look ecstatic." Gabriel spears bacon pointedly. "Give it a week, let alone three years, and you'll both go crazy."

"How do you know? Maybe we can...we could do it, ok?" Dean mumbles.

"I couldn't." Gabriel points out. "Could barely stand to be away from Sam for two days. And, let's face it – I am older and infinitely more controlled than you – raging pot of hormones that you are." He reaches over and ruffles Dean's hair.

Dean dips his head, the shorter man has a point.

"On to the plan then." Gabriel says happily. "I've had a few ideas..."

Castiel

'Demystifying the opposite sex'

Ash, Chuck and Castiel sit miserably under the next step, which has been chalked on the board over head. On the portable television in front of them is a video of women doing gymnastics.

"How is this supposed to help?" Ash mutters, "It was made in the sixties – no one finds this attractive...besides, that one on the end? With the snakeskin corset and the big hair...she might be satan."

Chuck huffs a laugh.

Castiel hugs his arms around himself. The blue scrub top he's wearing is a little too big for him, because it was Dean's. It still smells like him, a combination of mint and citrus deodorant and sunny skin.

"At least this is better than the last step." Ash continues, trying to buoy Castiel up with endless chatter. "Simulated intercourse – I've seen pictures from last year in the brochure – people in flesh toned leotards with fig leaves in...inappropriate places." He screws up his face in disgust. "Besides, I don't want Zachariah giving us the talk – he has weird opinions on foreplay, which he is all too eager to share." He shudders, having been cornered into a discussion with the older man earlier in the day.

"Real men don't mess around with romance – they get right on in and just do it." Chuck exclaims, his nasal impersonation perfectly matching their counsellor. Ash laughs, Castiel raises a reluctant half smile.

The TV falls into continuous static.

"Oh darn." Ash smirks. "Whatever shall we do?"

"I'm going for a walk." Castiel says softly, getting up and trailing out of the room in his oversized blue shirt.

"We need a plan." Ash says. "I can't take him being so miserable – he's too sweet to get mangled by Ruby in spandex foliage."

Chuck nods.

Outside, Castiel wanders the woods, scented with fading citrus, wondering if it's all been worth it.

Dean

"This is insane." Dean mutters from the back of the minivan.

"Or is it genius?" Gabriel trills happily from the front seat, his face already streaked with green and brown pain.

"The first one." Sam grunts, dressed like a sensible human being in the driver's seat.

"You'll see." Gabriel grins, pauses then throws his head back. "You'll ALL see – mwhahahah!"

"Jesus." Sam swerves in surprise, gets back on the road and nudges his boyfriend hard in the ribs. "No big laughs in the car – we covered this."

"I still don't see what this is going to accomplish." Dean interrupts. "I talk to Castiel and what? Ask him if he wants to give up his future for little old me? That's not exactly a plan."

"I have commando paint on – that makes it a plan." Gabriel explains patiently. He rubs his thigh against Sam's. "I'm also, _fully_, commando – just so you know."

"I'll keep that in mind." Sam mutters.

Dean closes his eyes. Why were these his only allies?

The van pulls up around the corner of the fence that surrounds the True Directions house. Dean climbs out, grasps the top of the fence and scrambles up. Behind him he can hear Sam and Gabriel whispering in the minivan.

"Why are you wearing the paint if you're just sitting here with me?"

"For the authenticity."

"Of what?"

"The fantasy, Sam."

"Which means?...oh..."

After than Dean drops over the fence and is mercifully out of earshot. He crouches and creeps through the bushes, approaching the window of the boy's dorm. It's night, and the others should be sleeping. Reaching up, Dean taps on the glass.

After a moment the curtains draw back, revealing a sleepy Ash who blinks, eyes widening. He opens the window.

"Shit man, I thought you were a bear."

Dean frowns at him.

Ash waves him off "Nightmare – what's up?"

"I need to talk to Cas." Dean hisses.

"Sure."

Ash leaves the window, then about five seconds later, returns, looking exceedingly worried.

"He's not here."

"What?" Dean feels a sickening lurch, like the ground has tipped and his heart has moved to compensate.

"I don't know where he is – he went for a walk for a while before we turned in, I just figured he'd come back while we were asleep."

"He never came back?" Dean swallows in panic. "Where did he go?"

"I don't know." Ash confesses.

"You couldn't take care of him for twenty-four hours?" Dean's eyebrows draw together, adrenalin making his limbs feel twitchy. He turns from the window without waiting for Ash to respond, not really in the right frame of mind to be fair to the other teen.

He fairly vaults the fence, lands on the other side in a plume of dust. Dean bangs on the window of the minivan. Gabriel winds down the window.

"Seriously? I was just getting ready to pump the insurgent for information."

"I thought I was the president?" Sam says, frowning in confusion.

"You posed as the president to acquire the nuclear attack codes – really you're..."

Dean thumbs the side of the van.

"Castiel's missing."

Both men sober almost instantly.

"Where did he go?" Sam asks.

"Ash didn't know." Dean glances out into the dark uneasily. "The woods maybe?"

"We'll help you look." Gabriel climbs out of the van with Sam and the three of them approach the woods. "Should we tell Zachariah and Balthazar, get some help?"

"No." Dean says grimly. "They can't find out about this."

"But what if..." Gabriel falters, glances at Sam.

"He hasn't done anything stupid." Dean bites out. "Just help me find him."

Castiel

Castiel sits with his back to a tree, head leaning back against the bark. He feels so tired, his stomach acidic and sore.

His eyelids droop.

Soon, it'll all be over.


	11. Chapter 11

_You can now follow me at JollySnidge on twitter._

Dean

"Anything?" Sam hisses from his right.

"No." Dean shakes his head, even though it's too dark for the gesture to be seen. "I'm going to loop around to the left again."

Sam doesn't say anything, but Dean knows he's thinking about how long they've been looking, and how they haven't yet found a trace of Castiel. Sam takes out his cell phone and Dean hears him start talking to Gabriel.

"...still nothing, how about...oh. I see." Sam sighs. "Give it another thirty minutes – then...I don't know, we'll have to get Balth and Zachariah out here...maybe call the police?"

Dean's heard enough.

He stalks the narrow paths of the wood and stills at every sound, every rustle that sounds like a person in the brush, every whimper of wind that sounds almost like Castiel.

"Cas?" he hisses into the dark. There's no reply.

Dean goes off the beaten track, pushing his way through long grass, nettles and thorns. He trips over something at the base of a tree, but looking down he sees only a huddled mass of cloth, like a discarded tent left to mildew. The force of his collision with it would have woken anyone, no matter how deeply asleep, so he continues, putting it out of his mind.

"Dean!" Gabriel calls from somewhere ahead.

"Have you found him?" Dean shouts back, struggling forwards.

"...No." Gabriel admits. "But...Sam thinks we should get the authorities out here..."

Dean bites his lip, eyes blurring. This is all his fault. He never should have left Castiel. He never should have had such blind faith in such an adolescent fantasy. Of course they could not stay apart for three years, of course Castiel would fail at his pretence – and now he could be gone for good.

It starts to rain, in a truly shitty example of pathetic fallacy, and Dean's t-shirt is sticking to his skin by the time he reaches Sam and Gabriel, his jeans soaked by the swishing layers of leaves.

"Sam is going to call the police, then get Balthazar out to help." Gabriel tells him, uncommonly sober, the stupid streaks of commando paint sluiced away by the rain. "I'm going to take you home, ok?"

"I need to be here." Dean insists.

"You're no good like this." Gabriel tells him frankly, then glances at Sam and lets his eyes fall to the ground. "And...if we find him...Dean it might not be..."

Dean remembers the wet hump of fabric by the tree, a wave of panic so intense that it robs him of breath strikes home in his chest. Hysteria, a powerful urge to just fall apart, engulfs him and for a moment Dean can't think beyond that moment – the rain falling onto him and Gabriel's hand on his arm.

"There was a...I found something, on the ground." Dean forces himself to say.

Sam and Gabriel exchange a glance.

"I tripped on it..." Dean looks at Sam and feels a pang of fear when the other man doesn't immediately look dismissive. "It didn't move..."

"Back there?" Sam points.

Dean nods.

"I'll go look...but you have to go with Gabriel."

Dean lets the smaller man guide him through the dripping trees, back towards the van. He pulls open the passenger door and gets in, suddenly surrounded by the sound of the rain striking the metal. Gabriel climbs into the driver's seat. He starts the van and pulls away from the fence. He doesn't say that it'll be ok – Dean doesn't know what that's the thing that seems the most real of all of this – that Gabriel doesn't reassure him.

"If he's dead." Dean says, and the words feel like clay in his mouth. "If...then it's all my fault."

The van slumps to a halt. Gabriel twists in his seat and pulls Dean closer, his arms going past his waist and up on the other side of him, clapping his wet back in an austere hug. He squeezes Dean once, hard, then pulls back and puts the van in gear again.

"If something has happened...it wasn't you." Gabriel says bluntly, looking out onto the road, the two puddles of rain spattered light in front of them.

Dean doesn't respond.

The drive back to Gabriel and Sam's house is the antithesis of their earlier journey. There's no nervous excitement, no jokes; just a deep hole of awful certainty in both of them that Castiel is right now being discovered in the woods – just another statistic in a long line. Another teenager swallowed up by a nights despair.

Several times Dean somehow forgets how to breathe, stays frozen for a moment before his body clasps at oxygen. He's cold and wet and none of it means anything.

Gabriel pulls up at the house and pauses, his hand on the door catch.

"Go inside, get some dry things on and..." he pauses, at a loss, for all that he's the elder, the more experienced, he has no idea what to say.

"And wait." Dean fills in, shoving the door open and stepping out into the rain.

Gabriel walks ahead, Dean somehow unable to move his limbs any faster than a crawl.

"Dean!"

He looks up at the shorter man's exclamation and sees Gabriel standing by the front door, already cracked slightly open, his hand still pushing the key into the lock, the light spilling out from inside on to...

"Dean?" Castiel looks up from the doorstep, sheltered in a drenched black wad of jacket, his blue scrubs peppered with rain drops.

Dean's legs don't want to work properly as he moves forwards, the path melting away until he's right next to Castiel, dropping onto the brick next to him and wrapping his arms around the drenched shape of him. Castiel's fingers clutch at Dean's bare, thorn scratched arms even as Dean pulls him to his feet and buries his face in the curve of the shorter boy's throat.

Gabriel pushes the door open.

"Get inside." He says, voice low as if struck dumb by the scene unfolding on his doorstep. "I have to call Sam." He leaves them alone as he does so, hand already on his cell. Dean moves into the living room with Castiel, their clumsy feet scattering cats. Dean's already kissing Castiel's cold mouth, almost convinced that the other boy is somehow back from the dead. He can't find it in him to speak, questions right now are pointless – Castiel is here, why ask why he isn't elsewhere?

Castiel clings to him with just as much desperation, his discarded coat sliding to the floor heavily. Dean recognises his own shirt underneath and slides his cold hands underneath it, feeling Castiel shiver, but press into his touch regardless. Castiel's kisses are planted wherever he can reach, more like mouthing, tasting than actual presses of his lips, sliding from the corner of Dean's mouth, over his cheek and jaw.

Gabriel coughs rather pointedly.

Castiel backs away, but his eyes are swamped in pupil, his hand still clutching the front of Dean's shirt.

"Sam's calling off the search...but Zach already knows that you skipped out on the programme." Gabriel tells them.

Castiel looks up at Dean. "It doesn't matter, I left –Dean...I left for good."

"Why?" Dean's finding staying even a foot from Castiel extremely difficult, if it were up to him right now, they'd retreat to his cat infested room and never leave again. He just wants to keep Castiel safe.

"I missed you too much." Castiel's hand flattens against Dean's chest and he moves almost unnoticeably closer. "I...I could not take three years without you, just for my brothers and a degree that I..." he shakes his head. "This is what I want – everything else I can work on."

Gabriel sighs something about abc screwing with the youth of today.

Neither Dean nor Castiel pay him much attention.

"I went for a walk to think it over...and I decided that I wanted to be with you now, not when it suited everyone else. My brothers are going to hate me no matter what."

"Then you just walked here?" Dean's hand creeps up without his consent, smoothing up against Castiel's cheek.

"No." Castiel looks abruptly haunted, like Bambi stumbling across his mother just as the hunter starts butchering her for the ride home. "Then I saw Zachariah and Balthazar in the practice car in the woods." He frowns. "Actually..._on, _the practice car...in the woods."

Gabriel retches involuntarily.

Dean looks at him.

"Sorry." Gabriel shudders. "Ugh...I think I'm straight now – tell Sam I'm sorry."

To Dean's surprise Castiel laughs, a clear little sound that seems to shock the shorter boy even as it bursts from his mouth.

He picks up the coat from the ground and removes a blocky shape from the pocket. He pushes it into Dean's hand.

Dean looks down wordlessly at the bundle of fifty dollar bills.

"Turns out, you can't run a gay recovery camp if everyone knows the two counsellors are sleeping together." Castiel shrugs.

"You blackmailed them?" Dean asks, shell shocked.

"For my education and our future happiness." Castiel says haughtily.

Dean grins, a rush of intense euphoria making him suddenly lightheaded. He feels like he could laugh for a very long time. Instead he closes the space between them, kisses Castiel again until his chest drums tight with need of air.

In the background he can hear Gabriel on his cell phone.

"Sam...you are never going to believe this...also, you owe me ten dollars."


	12. Chapter 12

_So here it is, another montage ending for a decidedly 90's fic. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and who stuck it out till the end _

Dean

Dean thinks it strange that something so far beyond the realm of sane, ended up making so much sense.

For example – Castiel's brothers sending him to the anti-gay militia – clearly nuts.

Dean's parents thinking that he's gay just because he likes watching football and has a few male rockers on his wall – also nuts.

(Ok, so they were right – but that's beside the point, the football and the posters weren't really down to the whole 'gay' thing anyhow)

The idea that out of all the places and all the people they could have ended up with, Dean and Castiel wound up in the wrong place at exactly the right time – well, that had to be statistically crazy.

But out of all that, some pretty sensical stuff had happened.

Firstly, Castiel had lost the hang ups imposed on him by drinking the crazy Christian Kool-Aid, and was now doing pretty much ok for an ex-ex-gay.

Dean had reluctantly (and then enthusiastically - as attested by Sam and Gabriel and about fourteen scandalised cats) embraced his interest in men generally and in Castiel specifically.

Balthazar and Zachariah, who Dean figured were a show in for the 'least likely to get together and yet still somehow screwing – DON'T PICTURE IT' award, had decided to continue to run True Directions, but as sleeping partners. Dean figured they wanted more time to be alone together, even if it meant trusting they camp to someone else.

Chuck and Ash, recently freed from the camp, decided to form a publishing company, with Chuck's books and Ash's technical wizardry at the fore. Dean had no idea what the little guy was writing about, but knowing Chuck it was probably something to do with Dungeons and Dragons (or something else equally nerdy).

As for Dean's family...well, not much could be said for them. He still has a hard time thinking about them, being abandoned for no good reason will do that to you. He called but they wouldn't answer, wrote and received no reply, save a large delivery of all the stuff in his bedroom back home via removal van, and a notice in the post that they would pay him a hundred dollars a month to day away from his home town.

He supposes it could have been worse.

Castiel for instance, has been completely cut off from his brothers. They sent him one letter telling him that all his old things were given to charity and they have since refused to acknowledge his existence. Only his anger over that has distracted Dean from his own problems – he'd even taken Cas down on the train to recover some of Castiel's things from the charity store where most of them ended up.

While Gabriel and Cas had bonded over their love of felines and fascination with experimental cuisine, Dean had found a big brother in Sam, who liked, you know – normal things. They'd been to the movies once, and Sam had let him have a beer while they watched the game on TV – all told, Dean had to admit that Sam was a pretty ok guy, even if his taste in men left a lot to be desired.

Dean hadn't forgotten his actual brother either, and he sent Adam a few emails on Sam's laptop. He had the feeling they were going to get along fine still, even with his parents going crazy.

Sam and Gabriel he has to admit, have been kind of a life line.

They know a lot of people all over the country, thanks to their activities in the gay community (Gabriel's cocktail parties are legendary – even though no one can remember them the morning after). It was nothing to find Dean and Castiel a room to rent in a nice house near the college Castiel wanted to attend. Dean had even gotten a job in a book store, and with the money from his parents, and the blackmail money from Balthazar and Zachariah, they were pretty well off, by student standards.

They packed up their U-haul with all their collective stuff from home, plus a rainbow scarf each (knitted by Becky the barmaid) and two cats donated by Gabriel, who had found a litter in a box under a bridge. Castiel had named them Audrey and Liza, and Dean was never going to forgive Gabriel for corrupting his boyfriend with such filth.

Dean felt kind of grown up, having a job, bringing home the bacon, owning a house plant that needed watering and two cats that needed feeding. He also had a boyfriend, and a bed to share with same – which was almost too good to think about when he wasn't actually at home, because it left him with a stupid grin on his face.

Castiel seems pretty happy with the arrangement too.

Castiel

Castiel had discovered three very annoying things about living with Dean:

He drinks out of the carton.

He always uses up that last of EVERYTHING and forgets to put it on the grocery list.

He hogs the covers worse than Audrey and Liza put together.

However, Castiel also has to admit that Dean looks particularly cute when he's sleepy, wandering into the kitchen in his underwear and band shirt to drink milk straight out of the fridge. He always brings something nice home from the bakery on the corner when he gets paid. And though he's selfish with the duvet, Dean is always prepared to snuggle for warmth, whether awake or not.

So that worked out just fine.

Castiel also gets to have sex with him.

Which makes up for a lot.


End file.
